Mel Gibson’s The Passion of
the Christ (2004) hinges on the root meaning of passion, which is
suffering. In fact, Jesus’ body is reduced to a bloody pulp after being
brutally tortured by the Roman soldiers going beyond Pontius Pilate’s order to
teach Jesus a lesson but keep him alive. At least there is an order to whip
Jesus; the Jewish Temple’s guards earlier took it upon themselves to repeatedly
hit Jesus with fists and even with chains, and almost strangle him with a rope
while arresting him. That guards, or police, especially of a religious institution,
are actually garden-variety thugs might resonate with viewers who need only
recall the latest news story about police brutality. The implication is that
such police employees who are actually thugs are delusional if they consider
themselves to be Christians. In fact, such official thugs can be understood
through the prism of the film as beating Christ himself, for what you do to
the least of these, you do to me. In the Gospel story, Jesus is an innocent
victim, and so too are even criminals who do not warrant being attacked. As in
the film, police brutality tends to occur before the victims of the abuse are
convicted, and thus presumed guilty before the law. For a human being to make
oneself the law incarnate or to presume oneself above the law is nothing short
of impious and self-idolatrous.
The film brutally dramatizes the
price that Jesus pays in the Gospels to make up for the sins of humanity so
that the chasm between God the Father and mankind can be narrowed, or even
eliminated at least when the son of man (i.e., Jesus) comes on clouds to redeem
the living and the dead of the faithful. I include the possibility of narrowed
because even if a person’s accumulated debt has been paid off by someone
else, it is possible to take on new debt as time goes by. That a Christian is
to ask God for forgiveness suggests that on-going sin can widen the gap between
a Christian and God. As Paul writes, faith is for naught if there is not love.
Sin is the absence and antithesis of love, and thus renders faith for naught.
Justification and sanctification are both necessary, according to Christian
theology. In the film, the question of whether one man can pay for everyone’s
sins is made explicit, and the implicit answer is that this is possible
provided that the one voluntarily submits to a lot of severe suffering. Gibson brings
the lofty soteriological (i.e., salvific) story in the Gospels down to earth in
perhaps even overdoing the violence that is inflicted on Jesus from his arrest
to his death. In so doing, Gibson makes it possible for us to relate the
violence in the film to that which occurs all too often, as reported in the
news. I have in mind the parallel between the aggressiveness of the Jewish and
Roman “police” against Jesus in the film and the problem of police brutality
even in the twenty-first century, which is supposed to be so modern and
advanced in large part though due to technological advances rather than
any change in human nature. Primal urges are still with us, so the need still
exists to hold them accountable when they lash out against other people. In
short, the film is more about human nature than Jesus’ identity as the Messiah
and Son of the living God, which in turn, however, is salient enough that Gibson
largely omits Jesus’ teachings altogether, and thus how a person can minimize
incurring new debt by getting closer to the Kingdom of God by forgiving and
even helping rude people detractors (i.e., “enemies”) on a daily basis by
taking on the perspective of God in viewing even such people as creatures
wholly dependent existentially on God. In other words, Gibson’s focus on the
most important event in the Gospel (Passion) story comes with a cost
even though highlighting the violence against Jesus by the Temple guards and
the Roman soldiers can give us a template by which to perceive the unjustified
violence in the world in a new light.
In the film, the Temple guards
manhandle Jesus in arresting him even though he clearly shows no indication of
resistance. In fact, he has just healed a soldier’s ear, which Peter had sliced
off with a knife. Jesus tells Peter to drop his knife with the adage that all
who live by the sword also die by it. Just after Peter drops his knife, a
Temple guard hits Peter on his face. The guard slugs like a thug in a one-sided
street fight, rather than being ordered by superiors to do hit the “culprit”;
thus, the guard’s act cannot be justified by appealing to his official duties. Then
he joins two other guards in roughly approaching Jesus as if he were resisting
arrest. He is stationary, yet the guards grab him as if he were a violent
criminal trying to evade capture or even attack them after healing another
guard! One of the guards even puts a rope around Jesus’ neck and yanks back severely
on the rope in an aggressive fit that can only stem from personal, unsanctioned
anger. On the way to the Temple, besides punching Jesus, the guards even throw
Jesus off a bridge on the way to the Temple. Jesus is literally hanging by a
rope when he sees Judas who is near the small bridge. I submit that Gibson goes
overboard with the violence here, for throwing someone off a bridge is quite a
leap from violently subduing and hitting a person under arrest. Yet considering
how aggressive contemporary police at least in the U.S. can be in arresting people
still presumed innocent, we should not minimize by imposing our normal sense of
normalcy on the pathologically violent.
On July 4, 2023, a police patrol
employee in Ohio released a K-9 dog on a driver who was standing with his hands
up. The man had been pulled over after an admittedly too-long chase because of
a missing “dirt tag” on his truck on a highway. The employee ignored another police
employee who shouted for the dog not to be released. According to NBC News, Rose,
the Black truckdriver, “can be seen on video . . . standing in front of
troopers with his hands in the air. A Circleville police officer who has a dog
can be heard telling Rose to ‘go on the ground or you’re gonna get bit.’”[1]
This sounds more like punishment than anything practically necessary in making
an arrest. The police employee primped himself up as judge and jury, as well as
executioner. It is then that a trooper can be heard yelling multiple times to
the trooper with the dog, “Do not release the dog with his hands up!” The
trooper with the dog let it go after Rose anyway.
It is interesting, therefore,
that the police employee who felt the need to punish Rose for not complying on
a minor point did not feel the need to comply. Clearly, releasing the dog could
not be legitimated by procedure, but, rather, pointed to a psychologically
pathological intolerance for being disobeyed. Anyone who is or has been a
parent knows that losing one’s temper just because a child does not immediately
comply is pathological. Perhaps Rose was afraid out of his mind precisely
because of the sordid, well-deserved reputation that too many police
departments in America have of a thirst for inflicting violence and a lack of
accountability in a sort of “brotherhood” of what are actually city employees.
Also in 2023, an off-duty Chicago policeman in Illinois violently subdued and put a knee into the
back of a child whom the aggressive “adult” assumed had stolen his son’s
bicycle. The kid was innocent, and the policeman’s personal anger clearly
motivated the attack. It is ironic that such a man would assume so
infallibly that a kid walking by a bike had stolen it. God-like powers of
omniscience would hardly be deposited in a thug.
In the film, once Jesus is
brought before the Sanhedrin (i.e., the religious council of the Jews), a
Temple guard takes it upon himself to judge Jesus as arrogant and disrespectful
towards the high priest, Caiaphas, and, furthermore, the guard takes it upon
himself to punish Jesus by hitting him in the face. Jesus asks why the Temple
policeman hit him even though Jesus had not done or said anything evil in
suggesting that the council members ask people what Jesus had taught rather
than ask Jesus himself. Tightening fingers into a fist to hit a person in the
face is typically done in “street fighting” by thugs and bullies, rather than
being indicative of any police policy that would justify the tactic, so Jesus
asks the guard why he hit Jesus. Earlier, when a Temple guard tied Jesus’ hands
behind his back in arresting him, Jesus did not ask why precisely because tying
hands together is procedure (both in the story and in our world). Jesus could
have asked why another guard almost strangled Jesus with another rope, as such
an action is not procedure and thus points to personal anger and perhaps even
sadism.
Back to 2023 in the U.S., a
sheriff deputy angered because an elderly black woman was recording another
deputy being rough in arresting her husband for stealing a cake from a grocery
store was not following procedures when he slapped the woman’s phone out of her
outstretched hand, put an arm around her neck to throw her down to the
pavement, and then asked her if she wanted to be hit in the face. She was not
resisting the attack; she was merely telling him not to hurt her because she
had cancer. His official badge and position should not blind us to the man’s
motive: In first reaching to slap the phone out of the woman’s outstretched hand,
it is clear that he was angry at the woman for recording the other policeman,
who was also being violent in arresting a non-violent man.
At the very least, the man who threw the elderly woman to the pavement just for recording clearly had a pathological anger problem (and thus should never have been hired). He also presumably believed that he was above being held accountable, especially by the wife of a shoplifter recording the arrest of her husband.
The woman was smart, and justified in recording the arrest of her husband. Lest it be assumed that the cameras that police in the U.S. must wear on their chests are sufficient to keep the holders from taking advantage of their weaponized position, such footage can conveniently go missing, or be blocked by other police at a scene. In 2023, for example, a police employee's camera was conveniently blocked from showing another employee hitting a Black woman in her face while she was holding her three-weeks-old baby. Her crime? She had been a passenger in a car that had a tail-light out. The police unreasonably demanded that she give her baby to them. Given the aggressiveness of those police employees, the woman's maternal instinct was appropriate.
The arrogance of the police is evident even in the attempt to hide their own bully from view as he hits a defenseless mother because she would not give up her baby to people shouting at her. If the bully, or the two deputies who took down the elderly Black couple, thought of themselves as Christians, such a fanciful delusion itself would be enough to furnish a glaring example of cognitive distortion and dissidence and thus psychological pathology.
The police can be viewed through the prism of Gibson’s movie as attacking Jesus because of how similar the attacks by the police are to those of the Temple guards in the film in attacking Jesus who is has, as Pontius Pilate tells the Sanhedrin, has done nothing to deserve the brutality. It is not necessary to the similitude between the actual world and the story-world of the film that only in the latter is the innocent victim the Son of God. Such an equivalence is not necessary for the point that I’m making. The dynamic of the respective brutalities is the same, crossing between screen and the world in which we live.
The sadism of the Roman soldiers
who are to whip Jesus yet do much more is on display in the film, as is the
sadism of the members of the Sanhedrin who are watching. The extreme lengths to
which the centurions go and the presence of supposedly pious clerics
raises the question of how much punishment should be met out to someone judged
by fallible human beings to be a blasphemer.
In his pontificate, Pope Francis
said to journalists, “Who am I to judge” regarding gay couples. This infuriated
more conservative Roman Catholic bishops and priests. Even a vicar of Christ is
a human being, so any claim of infallibility can only be impious and
presumptuous; the Holy Spirit works through not apart from human nature,
even in the selection of a pope. Similarly, police employees are human beings,
and thus not infallible in judging guilt, so doing so and then pronouncing a
punishment and executing it themselves is toxic, given human nature. Such
employees are not divine, and thus omniscient and omnipotent. In the film,
Jesus tells Pilate that he has no power over Jesus that has not been given from
above. Jesus then says that the real sinners are the members of the Sanhedrin,
who sent Jesus to Pilate. These two sentences constitute an interesting idea:
that the Jewish clerics went too far out in personal anger whereas Pilate is
acting within a governing authority, which God establishes according to Jewish
theology. It took me quite a while to understand how the two lines go together.
Caiaphas, the chief Jewish
priest, is visibly enraged by Jesus’ admission that he is the Messiah and Son
of the living God. Even in viewing Jesus as arrogant and impious—a perspective
that assumes infallibility in knowing whether Jesus’s identity-statement is
true or false—Caiaphas considers the Roman brutality in ripping Jesus’ skin to
the point of him being covered with his own blood to be justified. Both the
infallibility and judgement of the high priest belie any presumption he might
have that he is worthy of being cleric, let alone the high priest. It is ironic
that the sanctimonious, presumably divine chief priest is so angry at Jesus for
claiming a divine nature along with human nature; perhaps Caiaphas is so angry
at Jesus’ claim in part because he knows deep down that his own presumption is
not only arrogant, but also impious, given that he is sordid, manipulative, and
angry, blocks him even from asking Jesus what he means when he says he is the
Son of God.
In the Gospels, the Pharisees similarly
have a petty perspective in which they are fixated on quibbling over Jewish
laws while missing the salience of the sort of love that is (in) God. People
were not made for the laws; rather, the latter were instituted for us, Jesus
says. Is helping someone, especially someone who is weak or an enemy, so bad
just because the action is done on the Sabbath? In fact, such helping even on
the Sabbath brings one closer to God, (by metaphor to the Kingdom of God). Similarly,
does the law against blasphemy, assuming Jesus is blasphemous in claiming to be
the Son of God as Caiaphas (omnisciently) concludes, justify such cruelty as is
depicted in the film? In not believing that Jesus is divine, Caiaphas may think
that Jesus is delusional in thinking he is the Son of God, will come on clouds
to judge the living and the dead, and will sit at the right hand of the Father.
Watching, and perhaps even getting satisfaction out of someone with delusions
(even religious ones) being tortured can be deemed to be not only petty and
vengeful, but also sadistic.
In the film, Pilate does not
consider Jesus to be a threat even as a king, for the Kingdom about which Jesus
preaches is not of this world. Perhaps Pilate views Jesus as a harmless
dreamer, and maybe even delusional. Pilate is displeased that his soldiers have
tortured Jesus so much, and pleads with the Jews that Jesus has not deserved to
suffer so much. Caiaphas’ attempt to manipulate Pilate by presenting Jesus’
offense as a claim to being a king (rather than the Son of God) not having
worked, the hardened heart the chief priest insists that Pilate have Jesus
crucified anyway; Jesus’ suffering has not been enough!
So too, witnesses to the savage beatings of black men by police in the U.S. might say, how much suffering is enough to satisfy your lust for blood? How many bullets are needed in the body of a man who did not resist arrest? Such beatings demonstrate the endurance of primitive human nature, which, I submit, is inconsistent and incompatible with the legal power that governments at least in the U.S. give to their police employees. Only a delusional city executive or legislator would rely on Internal Affair offices in police departments, as can be seen by how flagrant the abuses are and likely were before the advent of phone cameras. Viewing the primal acts of aggression through the prism of The Passion of the Christ demonstrates just how contrary to Jesus’ example and preaching such “modern” police employees are who take advantage of their positions and society’s indifference and even enabling. The arrogant bullies will be surprised to learn that repentant innates still in prison are closer to the Kingdom of God. Unfortunately, as Roger Ebert wrote in his review of the film, it “is superficial in terms of the surrounding message . . . we get only a few passing references to the teachings of Jesus.”[2] To be sure, a focus on the “central event in the Christian religion”[3] has benefits, including in being able to see police even in the twenty-first century as vicariously attacking Jesus. Actually entering the Kingdom of Jesus’ Father requires more, as another Christian film, Mary Magdalene (2018), makes clear in making that kingdom, rather than an event, the focus. Police who take advantage of societal slippages of accountability and the enabling pro-police ideology to inflict pain on others for petty, ego-bruising “insults” and yet are certain of being saved by having faith in Jesus should ponder Paul’s point that faith without love is for naught. Furthermore, faith with aggression can only be hypocrisy. Blindness might excuse such bullies, but they see and so their sin remains.
[2] Roger Ebert, “The Passion of the Christ,” RogerEbert.com, February 24, 2004 (accessed July 24, 2023).
[3] Ibid.
